August 11, 2025 • 31 mins
Tired of wearing every hat in your gym?
AI can handle repetitive tasks so you can focus on the work only you can do.
Today on “Run a Profitable Gym,” Chris Cooper explains how gym owners can use artificial intelligence to automate their businesses without losing the human touch that gyms need.
He walks through the three-step process of systemize, optimize, automate—explaining that many gym owners fail to use AI successfully because they’re trying to automate broken or undefined processes.
Once solid systems have been optimized, gym owners can use AI for basic customer service, habits coaching, inventory management and similar tasks, which frees up their time for high-value work.
Coop also shares specific tools Two-Brain gyms are already using, from Garmin Clipboard for tracking athlete data to ManyChat for nurturing leads.
Check out the full episode to learn which tasks to automate first in your gym so you can start buying back your time.
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Gym Owners United
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3:02 - AI for ops and systems
8:05 - AI for inventory management
15:21 - AI for habit-based coaching
18:37 - AI for marketing & brand
25:38 - Massive opportunity for gym owners
29:39 - Culture, community & identity
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Running a micro-gym means wearing too many hats.
You're the cleaner, and thenyou're the bookkeeper, and then
you're the marketer, and thenyou're the sales rep, and that's
before anybody even shows up totrain or be coached.
And if you don't want to do allthose yourself, you can hire
staff.
But hiring staff turns you intoa manager, and none of us signed
(00:22):
up to manage people, so thesolution to getting the work
done becomes this new, biggerproblem and more work and
managerial work that we hate.
I'm Chris Cooper.
This is Run a Profitable Gym,and today I'm going to talk
about AI, where we are withartificial intelligence and bots
and agents, and how a gym ownercould potentially run a
(00:43):
single-person operation up to amillion dollars a year.
Now, a lot of you gym ownerslike me are seeing ads for AI
solutions to solve theseproblems.
Like, oh, if I just had a robotinstead of a human for chat and
sales and marketing and socialmedia, this would be a lot
easier, right?
Well, long-time gym owners mightremember hearing the same thing
(01:04):
about virtual assistants a fewyears ago.
Hey, if I had a virtualassistant in India, I could pay
them way less and get the workdone faster.
But as we all learned...
VAs can work, but they're nevera simple set it and forget it,
buy your way out of the problemsolution.
You still have to follow thethree steps to business
(01:24):
excellence.
These are systemize, thenoptimize, and then automate.
And the same is true if you'reusing AI or bots or chat agents.
You have to first systemize whatyou want in your business and
then optimize it by doing ityourself usually, and then
automate it by delegating to astaff person or automating it
(01:45):
with a bot.
So first you have to standardizeeverything so that you're
running a real business thatdoesn't require your constant
presence.
This is how you make yourbusiness good.
Then you have to test variousupgrades to see what works best,
put people better than you inthat role.
And this is what makes abusiness great.
And only then can you hand offdelivery to a staff person or
(02:08):
sometimes a robot or We'll beright back.
on repeat.
But most gym owners screw thisup by hiring a robot to do some
undefined or untested or brokentask.
Robots are not good at that.
VAs weren't great at thateither.
To build a good gym, you have tostart with the foundation, not
(02:32):
the marketing.
You can't just hire a robot todo something that you hate or
you're bad at.
So here's how you can use AI toimprove first the bottom level
of your business pyramid andthen the next level and the next
level and then finally Andfinally, the top level, which is
marketing.
Let's start with the basics,your operations and your
systems.
Your marketing changes overtime, your clients change, your
(02:55):
staff changes, you grow as aleader, but your operations and
your systems are what yourbusiness run on.
That's the foundation of yourgym.
So here are some examples thatyou can use for your ops and
systems.
First, workout programming.
There's a great tool by Garmin,the people that make the watch
that you're probably wearingright now, called Clipboard.
This is an app.
(03:16):
It's underutilized andunderappreciated.
The app is for coaches.
It pulls in all the data fromevery athlete's wearable in your
gym.
And as the largest producer offitness wearables in the world,
by far, coaches can get moredata from their athletes in one
place than from any other app.
It's crazy to me that GarminClipboard is absolutely free,
(03:37):
and it even includes an Thankyou.
Another great systems andoperations level tool is Gusto.
(04:01):
Gusto has AI features to helpyou manage payroll, pay your
contractors, and even calculatebenefits with automated
reminders and tax filing anderror detection, which is
especially valuable if you don'thave a bookkeeper.
Another great tool is QuickBooksSmart Invoicing.
So QuickBooks now has AIfeatures that auto categorize
expenses, send smart paymentreminders, and flag
(04:24):
inconsistencies, which can helpgym owners track cash flow.
without hiring full-time help.
Now look, I'm giving you AIapps, bots, suggestions here.
This is not a paid ad.
We don't let anybody sponsorthis.
These are simply tools that gymsin the Two Brain community are
using right now and love.
(04:44):
And I thought I'd share themwith you.
There's no paid endorsementhere.
There's nothing in it for me torecommend these over anything
else.
But these are just tools thatgyms in Two Brain are using,
which is exactly why Two Brainis the most progressive gym
mentorship company on theplanet.
If we're not sure what thesolution would be, we turn to
our gyms and say, how can youprove that this is better?
(05:06):
And when a solution comes along,we either buy it or build it for
gym owners.
And that means we're alwaysevolving and always making the
program better and better andbetter.
A third app that you can use foryour basic operations is sell by
chat or FAQ support.
So if somebody wants to puttheir membership on hold or ask
about a policy or your scheduleor your hours or, you know, how
(05:28):
can I book a goal review or howdo I get PT?
You can use something likeManyChat on your site because
that allows you to buildFacebook and Instagram DM flows
that simulate realconversations.
With a chat GPT plugin, it cananswer nuanced questions, book
no sweat intros for you, andqualify leads 24-7.
Now, some platforms like GLMhave bots like this that will
(05:52):
handle chat.
I just want to take a moment anddifferentiate a bot from an
agent.
A bot follows a script that'spredefined and agent learns as
it goes.
And so, you know, in right now,most companies that use bots on
their sites or on the sites thatthey build for you for lead
nurture are actually bots andthey're following a predefined
script.
(06:12):
In the future, as AI gets betterand better, these might actually
become agents who can have moremeaningful conversations with
people, potentially even do nosweat intros themselves.
In a very similar vein, ifyou're struggling with lead
nurture, and by the way, you Wetalk about this a lot on this
podcast.
Most gyms are not struggling toget leads.
They're struggling to nurturethe leads that they get or get
(06:33):
those leads to come in and booka no sweat intro and close them.
GLM, Gym Lead Machine, automatesSMS and email workflows, and
they use AI to decide when andhow to follow up with leads,
improving your show rate andlead conversion.
GLM's AI tools write nurtureemails, segment leads by
behavior, and optimize sequencesbased on open rates, which is
(06:55):
perfect for gym owners who don'tdon't have time to chase cold
leads.
Now, this is a great example ofsystemize, optimize, automate.
So what we teach gym owners todo in Two Brain is how to do
sell by chat, how to have aconversation and nurture your
leads to come in for a no sweatintro.
And we systemize that by givinggym owners a script and a
pattern to follow.
(07:16):
Over time, Working with amentor, the gym owner optimizes
that.
They get better at it themselvesuntil they're so good at it that
they can teach one of theirstaff to do it.
And at that point, they canchoose, do I automate this by
giving it to a staff person ordo I automate this task by
giving it to a bot?
And now, of course, the processof optimization never really
(07:39):
goes away, whether you delegateor automate.
And so the gym owner's realresponsibility here is to make
sure that your lead nurturemetrics are at a certain
measurement, and if they're not,then they can constantly be
improving them.
But they're not reinventing thesystem from scratch.
They're not answering every textthemselves forever.
They're starting by systemizingthe process, doing it themselves
(08:00):
until it's optimal, and thenautomating it by delegating it
to staff or using a bot.
Another way to use AI in yourbusiness is inventory management
and supplies.
Look, I hate it when we run outof paper towels.
I hate it when we've got asupplement and it's out of stock
because Because it's just likesomething that I forgot and
that's created this unnecessarydelay.
(08:22):
So you could use Notion AI forinventory logs.
You can create a custominventory database with Notion
AI to create and track cleaningsupplies, supplements, apparel,
and then set automated reordertriggers using integrations.
I mean, I'll tell you how I usethis for apparel.
I have it just remind me everyquarter like, hey, call Matt at
(08:42):
Forever Fierce and talk to himabout a new apparel pre-order.
I don't inventory apparel morethan like like half a dozen
t-shirts, but every quarter orevery four months, we have a new
inventory pre-order that makesus$1,300 to$1,800 profit.
You can also use Zapier and GPTautomations to connect
spreadsheets or point of salesystems to chat GPT to
(09:04):
automatically send reminders orplace supply orders when stock
gets low.
So what you can do is just setthis up with your inventory
system to send you a text or anemail or a message or an alert
saying like, hey, you're almoston a paper tell us time to order
more.
And you know, let's face it, ifyou're really sophisticated
about this, the new open AIagent, you know, scenario will
(09:26):
actually order the stuff fromAmazon for you.
One of my clients provides allmy cleaning supplies, they have
that kind of business.
And so you know, I have this setup to have them like just check
when they're in the gym once amonth, what do I need place the
order and send me a bill.
That's how I automate that.
But most gyms aren't that lucky.
And so you can do this withsoftware and bots.
(09:47):
And Look, if all this stuff isoverwhelming and you're like,
ah, technology, I get it, right?
Like I'm 50 years old.
This stuff is new to me.
And every time I think, wow, intwo years, we'll be able to do
this.
I quickly discover it's possibleright now.
The reason I'm sharing this withyou right now is I want to tell
you, or at least paint thispicture that it is possible to
(10:08):
have a gym run solely by you,that you can automate with AI,
all of these basic principles.
principles, all these basicsystems that run your gym.
I'm going to be talking moreabout sales and marketing in a
moment, but I want you to knowlike it is possible that you can
scale now without staff or youcan scale better with a couple
(10:32):
of key staff that you havebecause AI is not a replacement
for all staff.
It's an augmentation.
It can make you better at themarketing, for example.
It can make your coaches betterat the programming.
And so what you do is you takelike one or two really core
amazing people And you help themalmost like duplicate themselves
by using AI and bots instead ofhiring six or seven people in
(10:55):
which you've still got the oneor two core people, but four or
five of them are just kind oflike mediocre C plus.
you can still do this.
And like, you know, for example,I'm going to talk in a moment
too about where bots mightactually fit into coaching or
where they might replace roleslike a CSM in your gym too,
which will free up your beststaff to do more coaching or
(11:16):
more of what they're really goodat.
So delivery of your core serviceshould be done by a human.
Let's face it.
You can't put a Tesla robot infront of the noon group and
expect them to get really,really excited or build
relationships.
AI tools are robots and They cantake over low value roles.
They can reduce your payroll andthey can give you more time to
grow your business.
(11:37):
They can make you the ownerbetter at the marketing and
sales, your primaryresponsibility.
And this can give you more timetoo, but only if you take the
time to systemize your businessfirst, because AI isn't about
replacing great people.
It's about replacing repetitive,low leverage tasks so that you
and your team can focus on whatactually grows your business.
(11:58):
What does that leave you?
Well, it leaves you with thehigh value stuff.
And usually that's the stuff youlove doing, like coaching.
So for example, I wouldn't letChatGPT write this blog post or
podcast script for me becauseit's super important and I love
writing you love letters everysingle day.
So now I just want to give youtwo insights on what we're
(12:18):
testing at my own gym using chatagents.
So the first is a virtual CSM.
Now a client support manager isto retention what a salesperson
is to closing clients.
So once they're in the gym,somebody has to actually be in
charge of keeping them there.
So the CSM's job is to look at aweekly report and say, who
(12:40):
hasn't shown up this week?
It's to follow up with people alot, especially when they're
brand new.
It might be like lead nurture alittle bit to get people to come
into the NSI, but that dependson your CSM.
They also do things likeorganize events and parties and
remember people's birthdays andsend them a card and they
organize the Christmas card andour big charity gift giving
(13:01):
experience.
Christmas is organized by theCSM.
This is a place where a bot canstep in and do a lot.
So for example, Let's say thatsomebody has a question about
their membership.
Can I put this on hold for twoweeks?
Or they're really struggling tomake a class time and they want
to see a schedule.
Or maybe they haven't shown upin a week.
(13:21):
Well, a bot can be programmed todo all of that stuff for you.
You can place an agent on yoursite to answer questions, to
answer questions about theworkout.
Hey, what time are the classestoday?
Basic stuff like that.
But you can also set it up onthe back end using something
like ManyChat or Some softwareplatforms even have this
capability now to send a messageto people when they haven't been
(13:45):
to class for four days.
Where are you?
We miss you, that kind of thing.
You can set it up toautomatically order birthday
cards for people or welcomegifts when they join up at your
gym.
You can do all this stuff rightnow, and a lot of it is the work
that a CSM was required to do.
Of course, you want to have ahuman behind it all.
Right now, most of your clientsdon't know when they're talking
(14:06):
to a bot.
That's going to change verysoon.
People are becoming very wary ofthis.
That doesn't mean that a botcan't start the process.
So for example, let's say thatyou have a bot working through
GLM and it's sending peopletexts and it's like, hey, you
know, you've got an appointmenttomorrow.
Are you good to go?
And the person is like, no, Ineed to change.
(14:27):
Can we reschedule?
The bot can handle that.
It can have access to yourschedule and it can make the
change.
But if the person is like, no,I'm scared.
I'm really nervous about this.
Is this fake?
That's where a human can step inat any time.
The cool thing about Jim leadmachine is like, you can see
that that conversation happens.
happening and step in and thebot will just back off at any
(14:48):
point.
And so you always want to havethat human backup.
But the reality is if a bot ishandling 80% of the
conversations that are happeningaround your gym about the basic
things, processes, pricing,scheduling, how do I put things
on hold?
What's the workout today?
that frees up 80% of your timeto have the more meaningful and
(15:08):
important conversations.
And if you find that you'rehaving the same conversations
over and over, you can automatethose with the bot too.
So CSM is a great role for likean AI agent or bot.
And another one is habitscoaching.
This is one that I've beentesting.
So more and more to Two BrainGyms, we've been saying like
running a nutrition coachingone-on-one program is
(15:31):
complicated.
About 80% of the people thatneed help with nutrition would
probably be best helped by justteaching them good habits and
repeating those over and overand over again.
Hiring a nutrition coach is timesensitive.
Like it takes you a couple ofmonths to get them certified.
It's expensive.
Like you have to invest in thatcertification.
(15:53):
You might have to invest in newsoftware.
Sometimes you have to upgradeyour insurance.
Maybe you have to pay alicensing body to oversee your
nutritionist or dietician,whatever.
And unfortunately, they do getpaid a lot.
So your margin on the nutritioncoaching one-on-one is very low.
And they have to be managed.
And let's face it, like theaverage leg of a nutrition
(16:15):
client, according to the stateof the industry, was like three
months.
So what if you just sold ahabits challenge once a month?
And we started doing this at mygym way back in January.
The profit on this was around$1,300 the first time we did it.
When we did it again the nextmonth, over half the people
signed up and more people.
So the profit was over$1,800.
And it's really, really easy.
(16:36):
It doesn't take much of thecoach's time.
The most important thing thoughis that that the clients
actually stuck to basic habitsfor a full month.
Like it was a success for theclient.
That's most important to me.
It was a success for the coach.
That's second most important tome.
They made a great income offthis and it really helped the
business.
And it was easy, which is likemy new fourth criteria.
(16:59):
Well, here's what's interestingthough.
The job of the coach in thatchallenge wasn't complicated.
They posted a prompt in aprivate Facebook group every day
and they responded when peopletexted them.
What should I have for dinner?
You know, hey, I'm in thegrocery store.
Should I buy chicken or fish?
You can do all of that with anapp.
And the reality here is thatlike sometimes it's even better
(17:20):
than the coach.
So let's say that somebodycoaches or texts a coach and
it's like 10 at night andthey're like, oh, I'm sitting
here on the couch.
I'm starving.
There's nothing in my fridge butice cream.
What do I do?
Well, what's the coach going todo?
Oh, I guess I've got to get outof bed and respond to this.
Or they're just going to leaveit for the morning because
they're already asleep.
A bot's not going to have thatproblem.
(17:41):
And a bot can be programmed toask the client, like, why are
you hungry?
Okay, let's plan out tomorrow'sfood in advance now.
Go drink a glass of water whilewe're doing it.
See if you're still hungrylater, et cetera.
You know, a bot can go deep andit can talk to the client for
three hours if the client wantsto.
And that's, you know, one placewhere you can quickly automate a
(18:02):
very simple challenge in yourbusiness that will serve 80% of
your clients.
And if the client needs or wantsone-on-one support, then you can
escalate to a human, but you'restill running this automatically
the whole time.
So those are two places whereyou can use your bot like in
ops.
They're not going to replace youin coaching a group class, but
they could replace you inprogramming.
(18:22):
They could replace you in coachevaluation.
They could replace you with likea habits coach bot, for example,
and even as a CSM.
And that's like four big rolesin your business that are either
costing you a ton of time or youa ton of money to staff.
And now I want to talk about howto use AI in your gym's
marketing and brand and culture.
(18:44):
So in the first part of thispodcast, I talked about how to
use AI bots for your operationsand even for some of your
coaching.
But the top of the businesspyramid is built on attention
and storytelling and humanconnection.
Great marketing and brandstorytelling take time, and
that's time that a lot of gymowners don't have.
I mean, I've been telling gymowners to publish more content
(19:06):
since 2011, at least.
And it's still the mostchallenging part of what we
recommend gym owners do.
So now it's an interesting timebecause content is still really
powerful to your prospectiveaudience and to your clients,
but AI is making that reallyeasy and fast to produce content
for the first time.
We're at this kind of nexuswhere you can create content in
(19:29):
seconds and that content isstill going to be really
effective for getting andkeeping clients.
So here's how AI can help youbuild and promote your gym
better and faster and with moreconsistency across all four
marketing funnels.
So the first funnel is socialmedia and GLM, Gym Lead Machine,
uses AI to plan, generate, andoptimize your social posts,
(19:49):
automatically repurposingcontent into multiple four to
keep your feed consistent andstrategic.
Another tool is CapCut.
It's AI automatically captionsformats and cuts your videos for
reels and TikToks, making iteasy to create high quality
video content in minutes.
A little word of warning here.
Some platforms and theirpromoters overemphasize using AI
(20:11):
to create content.
AI is not perfect.
You still have to look at thepictures and edit the text.
I'm sure you've seen a Facebookpost from somebody that's like
all in on AI and it's gotspelling errors or the picture
is off, it doesn't make sense,you immediately lose trust, not
just for the AI, but for thatperson too.
Remember, like your brand isyour reputation.
(20:33):
And if you don't spell check, ifyou don't check what you're
putting out in the world, yourreputation could grow or it
could suffer.
I just want you to remember thata bad piece of content can hurt
you as much as 50 good pieces ofcontent will help you.
So images and texts that areautomatically AI generated will
open you up to criticism onlineand sometimes laughter.
(20:53):
The second funnel is the contentfunnel.
And so a great tool here isWhisperFlow.
Now, John Goodman was talkingabout this at the Two Brain
Summit.
What it does is it collects andedits client video stories via
mobile prompts, which makes itreally, really easy to showcase
transformations and testimonialswithout scheduling interviews.
(21:14):
So let's say that you're waitingin line outside or you're
outside the coffee shop or theice cream stand and you see a
client walk by and you pick itup and you just tell that client
story.
WhisperFlow will turn that intoa blog post for you that's
really, really easy to justpost, okay?
You can also use ChatGPT's 4.0mode to create consistent
(21:34):
messaging, value-based scripts,and brand storytelling prompts
to reinforce what makes your gymunique.
So what I like to do sometimesin my gym is just have the GPT
interview me.
Hey, when did you first meetthis client?
What brought them into the gym?
What's their favorite thingabout the gym?
What's your best story aboutthis client?
And it turns that into a blogpost for me.
It just feels really, reallyeasy.
(21:55):
Another one is a referralfunnel.
So the third marketing funnelthat we teach is the referral
funnel.
Most gym owners are way toopassive about referrals, but you
can use a tool like Bonjoro tosend personalized video requests
for referrals.
And then the AI recommendstalking points and automatically
reminds clients at the bestmoment that they should refer
somebody, like after they've hita PR or a milestone.
(22:17):
You can also just use ChatGPTfor this and build automated
thank you notes, referralrequests, and follow-up messages
that sound personal but nottemplated or salesy, and then
plug those into your clientjourney to automatically send
with tools like GLM.
I mean, let's face it.
I've been asking people forreferrals for a long time.
I feel great about it because Iknow that I'm saving their
(22:38):
spouse's life, their friend'slife, their coworker's life.
But I know a lot of new gymowners feel awkward about asking
for referrals.
And so it's easier just torecord a video once, put it in a
GLM workflow, and let itautomatically send to every
client after 90 days, somethinglike that.
It's very simple.
You don't have to do it everytime.
Just get it out of your hands,but make sure it gets done.
(23:00):
And this is a great example ofsystemizing, optimizing, and
then automating.
So the fourth funnel you want tobuild is a paid ads funnel.
Now, you want to use Meta's toolto do this, basically, because
it's It generates highconverting ad images and copy
based on your target audience,which is great if you're running
meta or you're running Googleads and it's built in, right?
(23:22):
So their meta is built in AIdynamically tests and optimizes
ad performance for you.
This used to be like learningchemistry.
It was complicated.
You really had to focus on it.
A lot of gyms hated it.
They would learn to do itthrough two brain and then they
would choose to hire an agencyfrom a place of knowledge,
right?
Like the wrong thing to do hereis say, I hate ads, but I think
(23:43):
I need them.
I'm going to hire an agency torun them for me.
The agency's incentive is tospend your entire budget.
You need to learn how to dothis, and then you can hand it
off for much, much less withmuch, much greater results.
And so that's what we do in TwoBrain.
But Meta has an AI learningsystem now, which takes a lot of
the pain out.
So if you used to run ads, ifyou've been running ads, but you
(24:04):
hate it, really talk to atwo-brain marketing mentor about
how to use AI on the Metaplatform, by the way, to
optimize for you so that you'renot constantly tracking and
setting up spreadsheets andoptimizing and tweaking and
guessing.
It takes the guesswork out ofit.
So you provide the assets likethe pictures and the text, which
by the way, two-brain gives youin the two-brain toolkit.
(24:26):
And then Meta does the heavylifting across the audiences and
placements.
So while the same picture mightnot work for my gym and your
gym, I'm going to give you a lotof different pictures and let
Meta do the testing, decidewhich one works best, and then
just start running ads on that.
And the fifth thing here, youknow, there's really only four
funnels that you need in yourgym, but the safety net, right?
(24:46):
The catch-all is SEO and search.
And I think this is a reallyimportant point to make.
SEO is going away, or at leastit's changed so much that it
will need a new name soon.
More and people are lettingChatGPT or Gemini do their
searching for them.
They're not even going on Googleanymore.
ChatGPT now handles over abillion searches every week.
(25:09):
So it's not just saying like,here's how to do this.
What it's doing is actuallysearching the internet, finding
the answer, and then presentingit back to the user.
Now, even five years ago, Googlewas moving away from having
clickable links on google.com tojust putting the best answer
right on the homepage.
And now the process is justspeeding up tenfold with Gemini
(25:30):
and other AI agents, right?
The information age is kind ofover and the augmentation age is
here.
You know, the Wall StreetJournal just had a great article
last week about Google searchesdemise.
Google is kind of panickingbecause it's realized like
search is over and within a yearor two, SEO will almost be
irrelevant because the audienceis no longer a person typing in
(25:52):
a search query, but a bot that'sactually doing the searching and
presenting the answer instead ofa link to an article that
contains the answer.
So, you know, what does thismean?
Well, it means that thecompanies themselves...
are pivoting.
And it means it's a massiveopportunity for you.
Imagine that Google search hadjust launched today, knowing
(26:13):
what you do now, you would havea massive advantage, right?
You would know, okay, here's howI get everybody in my town to my
site because they're usingGoogle search.
And I know exactly what keywordsto use.
I know to publish some contentand that's going to like make
Google point to me every singletime.
If you ranked number one inGoogle for the next three years,
what kind of advantage wouldthat give you?
(26:35):
Well, this is your opportunityto do the same thing with bots.
It's not quite the same asstarting over because Gemini and
the other chatbots still searchthe internet for information,
but you can still gain a massiveadvantage if you act right now.
Here's how to do it.
First, publish a lot of qualitycontent.
Forget the SEO rank math andjust tell the answer.
(26:56):
Here's how to lose weight.
Second, look for your brand onReddit and make sure that you
respond to posts.
Do the same on Google MyBusiness.
If you have bad reviews or goodGood reviews anywhere, start
responding to all of thembecause that's what the bots are
looking for.
I don't know why they prioritizeReddit.
I can't imagine like a moredeceptive, negative place to
(27:18):
find answers, but they do.
And the key is that if you getcriticism or if you get praise
on Reddit or on Facebook reviewsor Google reviews, you need to
respond anyway so that the botcan decipher what's the truth
and what's not.
Next, you want to make sure thatyour website has a lot of
stories and how to exercisevideos on it.
The most important visitors inthe future will be bots, not
(27:41):
humans.
The humans will find theiranswers through the bots.
So the bots will be coming toyour website looking for the
information.
If they don't find it in a halfa second, they're gone.
They're going to go looksomewhere else and report that
back to the user.
So make sure that you've got...
you know, good content fast, andalso make sure that your site
loads fast because bots aregoing to grab the first info
(28:02):
they can get.
Instead of waiting for your siteto load, they're going to move
on to the next.
So the battle for the fastest AIis already getting crazy, which
is why companies like Nvidiahave skyrocketing stock prices,
but that's another post.
Like this pursuit of speed inbot search is what has made
Nvidia the world's first$4trillion company, right?
(28:25):
That's critical to understand.
Next, forget the personal brandstuff.
Nobody's out there searching forinformation about you.
Should I look at Chris Cooper asa fitness coach?
No.
Which gym in my town is the bestfor me?
That's what they're looking.
Build your business brand.
It's time to go hard on yourbusiness brand and put your own
personal brand stuff on the backburner for now.
(28:48):
If you do nothing else for therest of 2025 and just focus on
publishing content to build yourbusiness brand, you will be six
months ahead of Look, it's notjust search.
80% of consumers now resolve 40%of their online searches without
clicking any links.
This has a name.
It's called zero-click search.
(29:09):
That means they're usinggenerative AI for shopping
recommendations.
OpenAI is about to add a Buy Nowbutton that links to a
merchant's website, which willlet people shop through ChatGPT.
That seems like a pretty obviousadvantage for the merchant
that's linked by the bot.
Maybe that should be you, right?
Traffic and ranking and averageposition and click-through
(29:32):
rates, none of these metricseven make sense to chase going
forward.
Okay.
So that's marketing, but I wantto talk quickly about building
culture and community andidentity because AI can't lead
people, but it can give you backthe hours that you need to lead
people better.
So for example, you can automateyour admin so that you can host
(29:52):
a monthly seminar at your gymfor prospects and clients and
their families and friends.
It can schedule your media postsso that you can show up and
interview your clients more orcoach more.
You can use AI to take theresults from your goal reviews.
You got a little bot sittingthere with you while you're
doing a goal review, and it canturn those into podium posts.
It can also change yourprogramming to reflect what the
(30:14):
majority of your gym actuallyneeds.
My final thought here is youdon't need to fear AI.
You need to use it to buy backyour time so that you can lead
like only a gym owner can.
So start with the lowest valuerepetitive roles.
While AI can't clean your toiletyet, it can perform tasks that
are just as important, but mightfeel gross to you, right?
(30:35):
Only you can define what a lowvalue role means.
And while I place a low priorityon billing and a high priority
on blogging, you might do theopposite and that's okay.
The goal here is to use AI tobuy back your time for the
things that you're best at andlove most.
I'm Chris Cooper.
This is Run a Profitable Gym.
And this discussion is ongoing.
It happens every single day inour free group,
(30:57):
GymOwnersUnited.com.
You can join that group, youknow, as long as your intentions
are pure.
I'm just kidding.
As long as you're not a jerk,you're welcome in that group and
you can discuss, you can askquestions, you can answer other
people's questions, and we cantalk about AI.
I will say that that group isnot run by bots.
And so if you ask for somethingin that group and I respond,
(31:17):
you're talking to a human andnot a robot.
So keep that in mind when we'rechatting through Facebook
Messenger, please.
Thank you for your service.
A bot can replace a lot ofbusiness tasks, but it can never
replace you.
The information age is over.
The augmentation age is upon us.
Use bots to help make you abetter leader, gym owner, and
(31:40):
fitness coach.
Running a micro-gym means wearing too many hats.
You're the cleaner, and thenyou're the bookkeeper, and then
you're the marketer, and thenyou're the sales rep, and that's
before anybody even shows up totrain or be coached.
And if you don't want to do allthose yourself, you can hire
staff.
But hiring staff turns you intoa manager, and none of us signed
(00:22):
up to manage people, so thesolution to getting the work
done becomes this new, biggerproblem and more work and
managerial work that we hate.
I'm Chris Cooper.
This is Run a Profitable Gym,and today I'm going to talk
about AI, where we are withartificial intelligence and bots
and agents, and how a gym ownercould potentially run a
(00:43):
single-person operation up to amillion dollars a year.
Now, a lot of you gym ownerslike me are seeing ads for AI
solutions to solve theseproblems.
Like, oh, if I just had a robotinstead of a human for chat and
sales and marketing and socialmedia, this would be a lot
easier, right?
Well, long-time gym owners mightremember hearing the same thing
(01:04):
about virtual assistants a fewyears ago.
Hey, if I had a virtualassistant in India, I could pay
them way less and get the workdone faster.
But as we all learned...
VAs can work, but they're nevera simple set it and forget it,
buy your way out of the problemsolution.
You still have to follow thethree steps to business
(01:24):
excellence.
These are systemize, thenoptimize, and then automate.
And the same is true if you'reusing AI or bots or chat agents.
You have to first systemize whatyou want in your business and
then optimize it by doing ityourself usually, and then
automate it by delegating to astaff person or automating it
(01:45):
with a bot.
So first you have to standardizeeverything so that you're
running a real business thatdoesn't require your constant
presence.
This is how you make yourbusiness good.
Then you have to test variousupgrades to see what works best,
put people better than you inthat role.
And this is what makes abusiness great.
And only then can you hand offdelivery to a staff person or
(02:08):
sometimes a robot or We'll beright back.
on repeat.
But most gym owners screw thisup by hiring a robot to do some
undefined or untested or brokentask.
Robots are not good at that.
VAs weren't great at thateither.
To build a good gym, you have tostart with the foundation, not
(02:32):
the marketing.
You can't just hire a robot todo something that you hate or
you're bad at.
So here's how you can use AI toimprove first the bottom level
of your business pyramid andthen the next level and the next
level and then finally Andfinally, the top level, which is
marketing.
Let's start with the basics,your operations and your
systems.
Your marketing changes overtime, your clients change, your
(02:55):
staff changes, you grow as aleader, but your operations and
your systems are what yourbusiness run on.
That's the foundation of yourgym.
So here are some examples thatyou can use for your ops and
systems.
First, workout programming.
There's a great tool by Garmin,the people that make the watch
that you're probably wearingright now, called Clipboard.
This is an app.
(03:16):
It's underutilized andunderappreciated.
The app is for coaches.
It pulls in all the data fromevery athlete's wearable in your
gym.
And as the largest producer offitness wearables in the world,
by far, coaches can get moredata from their athletes in one
place than from any other app.
It's crazy to me that GarminClipboard is absolutely free,
(03:37):
and it even includes an Thankyou.
Another great systems andoperations level tool is Gusto.
(04:01):
Gusto has AI features to helpyou manage payroll, pay your
contractors, and even calculatebenefits with automated
reminders and tax filing anderror detection, which is
especially valuable if you don'thave a bookkeeper.
Another great tool is QuickBooksSmart Invoicing.
So QuickBooks now has AIfeatures that auto categorize
expenses, send smart paymentreminders, and flag
(04:24):
inconsistencies, which can helpgym owners track cash flow.
without hiring full-time help.
Now look, I'm giving you AIapps, bots, suggestions here.
This is not a paid ad.
We don't let anybody sponsorthis.
These are simply tools that gymsin the Two Brain community are
using right now and love.
(04:44):
And I thought I'd share themwith you.
There's no paid endorsementhere.
There's nothing in it for me torecommend these over anything
else.
But these are just tools thatgyms in Two Brain are using,
which is exactly why Two Brainis the most progressive gym
mentorship company on theplanet.
If we're not sure what thesolution would be, we turn to
our gyms and say, how can youprove that this is better?
(05:06):
And when a solution comes along,we either buy it or build it for
gym owners.
And that means we're alwaysevolving and always making the
program better and better andbetter.
A third app that you can use foryour basic operations is sell by
chat or FAQ support.
So if somebody wants to puttheir membership on hold or ask
about a policy or your scheduleor your hours or, you know, how
(05:28):
can I book a goal review or howdo I get PT?
You can use something likeManyChat on your site because
that allows you to buildFacebook and Instagram DM flows
that simulate realconversations.
With a chat GPT plugin, it cananswer nuanced questions, book
no sweat intros for you, andqualify leads 24-7.
Now, some platforms like GLMhave bots like this that will
(05:52):
handle chat.
I just want to take a moment anddifferentiate a bot from an
agent.
A bot follows a script that'spredefined and agent learns as
it goes.
And so, you know, in right now,most companies that use bots on
their sites or on the sites thatthey build for you for lead
nurture are actually bots andthey're following a predefined
script.
(06:12):
In the future, as AI gets betterand better, these might actually
become agents who can have moremeaningful conversations with
people, potentially even do nosweat intros themselves.
In a very similar vein, ifyou're struggling with lead
nurture, and by the way, you Wetalk about this a lot on this
podcast.
Most gyms are not struggling toget leads.
They're struggling to nurturethe leads that they get or get
(06:33):
those leads to come in and booka no sweat intro and close them.
GLM, Gym Lead Machine, automatesSMS and email workflows, and
they use AI to decide when andhow to follow up with leads,
improving your show rate andlead conversion.
GLM's AI tools write nurtureemails, segment leads by
behavior, and optimize sequencesbased on open rates, which is
(06:55):
perfect for gym owners who don'tdon't have time to chase cold
leads.
Now, this is a great example ofsystemize, optimize, automate.
So what we teach gym owners todo in Two Brain is how to do
sell by chat, how to have aconversation and nurture your
leads to come in for a no sweatintro.
And we systemize that by givinggym owners a script and a
pattern to follow.
(07:16):
Over time, Working with amentor, the gym owner optimizes
that.
They get better at it themselvesuntil they're so good at it that
they can teach one of theirstaff to do it.
And at that point, they canchoose, do I automate this by
giving it to a staff person ordo I automate this task by
giving it to a bot?
And now, of course, the processof optimization never really
(07:39):
goes away, whether you delegateor automate.
And so the gym owner's realresponsibility here is to make
sure that your lead nurturemetrics are at a certain
measurement, and if they're not,then they can constantly be
improving them.
But they're not reinventing thesystem from scratch.
They're not answering every textthemselves forever.
They're starting by systemizingthe process, doing it themselves
(08:00):
until it's optimal, and thenautomating it by delegating it
to staff or using a bot.
Another way to use AI in yourbusiness is inventory management
and supplies.
Look, I hate it when we run outof paper towels.
I hate it when we've got asupplement and it's out of stock
because Because it's just likesomething that I forgot and
that's created this unnecessarydelay.
(08:22):
So you could use Notion AI forinventory logs.
You can create a custominventory database with Notion
AI to create and track cleaningsupplies, supplements, apparel,
and then set automated reordertriggers using integrations.
I mean, I'll tell you how I usethis for apparel.
I have it just remind me everyquarter like, hey, call Matt at
(08:42):
Forever Fierce and talk to himabout a new apparel pre-order.
I don't inventory apparel morethan like like half a dozen
t-shirts, but every quarter orevery four months, we have a new
inventory pre-order that makesus$1,300 to$1,800 profit.
You can also use Zapier and GPTautomations to connect
spreadsheets or point of salesystems to chat GPT to
(09:04):
automatically send reminders orplace supply orders when stock
gets low.
So what you can do is just setthis up with your inventory
system to send you a text or anemail or a message or an alert
saying like, hey, you're almoston a paper tell us time to order
more.
And you know, let's face it, ifyou're really sophisticated
about this, the new open AIagent, you know, scenario will
(09:26):
actually order the stuff fromAmazon for you.
One of my clients provides allmy cleaning supplies, they have
that kind of business.
And so you know, I have this setup to have them like just check
when they're in the gym once amonth, what do I need place the
order and send me a bill.
That's how I automate that.
But most gyms aren't that lucky.
And so you can do this withsoftware and bots.
(09:47):
And Look, if all this stuff isoverwhelming and you're like,
ah, technology, I get it, right?
Like I'm 50 years old.
This stuff is new to me.
And every time I think, wow, intwo years, we'll be able to do
this.
I quickly discover it's possibleright now.
The reason I'm sharing this withyou right now is I want to tell
you, or at least paint thispicture that it is possible to
(10:08):
have a gym run solely by you,that you can automate with AI,
all of these basic principles.
principles, all these basicsystems that run your gym.
I'm going to be talking moreabout sales and marketing in a
moment, but I want you to knowlike it is possible that you can
scale now without staff or youcan scale better with a couple
(10:32):
of key staff that you havebecause AI is not a replacement
for all staff.
It's an augmentation.
It can make you better at themarketing, for example.
It can make your coaches betterat the programming.
And so what you do is you takelike one or two really core
amazing people And you help themalmost like duplicate themselves
by using AI and bots instead ofhiring six or seven people in
(10:55):
which you've still got the oneor two core people, but four or
five of them are just kind oflike mediocre C plus.
you can still do this.
And like, you know, for example,I'm going to talk in a moment
too about where bots mightactually fit into coaching or
where they might replace roleslike a CSM in your gym too,
which will free up your beststaff to do more coaching or
(11:16):
more of what they're really goodat.
So delivery of your core serviceshould be done by a human.
Let's face it.
You can't put a Tesla robot infront of the noon group and
expect them to get really,really excited or build
relationships.
AI tools are robots and They cantake over low value roles.
They can reduce your payroll andthey can give you more time to
grow your business.
(11:37):
They can make you the ownerbetter at the marketing and
sales, your primaryresponsibility.
And this can give you more timetoo, but only if you take the
time to systemize your businessfirst, because AI isn't about
replacing great people.
It's about replacing repetitive,low leverage tasks so that you
and your team can focus on whatactually grows your business.
(11:58):
What does that leave you?
Well, it leaves you with thehigh value stuff.
And usually that's the stuff youlove doing, like coaching.
So for example, I wouldn't letChatGPT write this blog post or
podcast script for me becauseit's super important and I love
writing you love letters everysingle day.
So now I just want to give youtwo insights on what we're
(12:18):
testing at my own gym using chatagents.
So the first is a virtual CSM.
Now a client support manager isto retention what a salesperson
is to closing clients.
So once they're in the gym,somebody has to actually be in
charge of keeping them there.
So the CSM's job is to look at aweekly report and say, who
(12:40):
hasn't shown up this week?
It's to follow up with people alot, especially when they're
brand new.
It might be like lead nurture alittle bit to get people to come
into the NSI, but that dependson your CSM.
They also do things likeorganize events and parties and
remember people's birthdays andsend them a card and they
organize the Christmas card andour big charity gift giving
(13:01):
experience.
Christmas is organized by theCSM.
This is a place where a bot canstep in and do a lot.
So for example, Let's say thatsomebody has a question about
their membership.
Can I put this on hold for twoweeks?
Or they're really struggling tomake a class time and they want
to see a schedule.
Or maybe they haven't shown upin a week.
(13:21):
Well, a bot can be programmed todo all of that stuff for you.
You can place an agent on yoursite to answer questions, to
answer questions about theworkout.
Hey, what time are the classestoday?
Basic stuff like that.
But you can also set it up onthe back end using something
like ManyChat or Some softwareplatforms even have this
capability now to send a messageto people when they haven't been
(13:45):
to class for four days.
Where are you?
We miss you, that kind of thing.
You can set it up toautomatically order birthday
cards for people or welcomegifts when they join up at your
gym.
You can do all this stuff rightnow, and a lot of it is the work
that a CSM was required to do.
Of course, you want to have ahuman behind it all.
Right now, most of your clientsdon't know when they're talking
(14:06):
to a bot.
That's going to change verysoon.
People are becoming very wary ofthis.
That doesn't mean that a botcan't start the process.
So for example, let's say thatyou have a bot working through
GLM and it's sending peopletexts and it's like, hey, you
know, you've got an appointmenttomorrow.
Are you good to go?
And the person is like, no, Ineed to change.
(14:27):
Can we reschedule?
The bot can handle that.
It can have access to yourschedule and it can make the
change.
But if the person is like, no,I'm scared.
I'm really nervous about this.
Is this fake?
That's where a human can step inat any time.
The cool thing about Jim leadmachine is like, you can see
that that conversation happens.
happening and step in and thebot will just back off at any
(14:48):
point.
And so you always want to havethat human backup.
But the reality is if a bot ishandling 80% of the
conversations that are happeningaround your gym about the basic
things, processes, pricing,scheduling, how do I put things
on hold?
What's the workout today?
that frees up 80% of your timeto have the more meaningful and
(15:08):
important conversations.
And if you find that you'rehaving the same conversations
over and over, you can automatethose with the bot too.
So CSM is a great role for likean AI agent or bot.
And another one is habitscoaching.
This is one that I've beentesting.
So more and more to Two BrainGyms, we've been saying like
running a nutrition coachingone-on-one program is
(15:31):
complicated.
About 80% of the people thatneed help with nutrition would
probably be best helped by justteaching them good habits and
repeating those over and overand over again.
Hiring a nutrition coach is timesensitive.
Like it takes you a couple ofmonths to get them certified.
It's expensive.
Like you have to invest in thatcertification.
(15:53):
You might have to invest in newsoftware.
Sometimes you have to upgradeyour insurance.
Maybe you have to pay alicensing body to oversee your
nutritionist or dietician,whatever.
And unfortunately, they do getpaid a lot.
So your margin on the nutritioncoaching one-on-one is very low.
And they have to be managed.
And let's face it, like theaverage leg of a nutrition
(16:15):
client, according to the stateof the industry, was like three
months.
So what if you just sold ahabits challenge once a month?
And we started doing this at mygym way back in January.
The profit on this was around$1,300 the first time we did it.
When we did it again the nextmonth, over half the people
signed up and more people.
So the profit was over$1,800.
And it's really, really easy.
(16:36):
It doesn't take much of thecoach's time.
The most important thing thoughis that that the clients
actually stuck to basic habitsfor a full month.
Like it was a success for theclient.
That's most important to me.
It was a success for the coach.
That's second most important tome.
They made a great income offthis and it really helped the
business.
And it was easy, which is likemy new fourth criteria.
(16:59):
Well, here's what's interestingthough.
The job of the coach in thatchallenge wasn't complicated.
They posted a prompt in aprivate Facebook group every day
and they responded when peopletexted them.
What should I have for dinner?
You know, hey, I'm in thegrocery store.
Should I buy chicken or fish?
You can do all of that with anapp.
And the reality here is thatlike sometimes it's even better
(17:20):
than the coach.
So let's say that somebodycoaches or texts a coach and
it's like 10 at night andthey're like, oh, I'm sitting
here on the couch.
I'm starving.
There's nothing in my fridge butice cream.
What do I do?
Well, what's the coach going todo?
Oh, I guess I've got to get outof bed and respond to this.
Or they're just going to leaveit for the morning because
they're already asleep.
A bot's not going to have thatproblem.
(17:41):
And a bot can be programmed toask the client, like, why are
you hungry?
Okay, let's plan out tomorrow'sfood in advance now.
Go drink a glass of water whilewe're doing it.
See if you're still hungrylater, et cetera.
You know, a bot can go deep andit can talk to the client for
three hours if the client wantsto.
And that's, you know, one placewhere you can quickly automate a
(18:02):
very simple challenge in yourbusiness that will serve 80% of
your clients.
And if the client needs or wantsone-on-one support, then you can
escalate to a human, but you'restill running this automatically
the whole time.
So those are two places whereyou can use your bot like in
ops.
They're not going to replace youin coaching a group class, but
they could replace you inprogramming.
(18:22):
They could replace you in coachevaluation.
They could replace you with likea habits coach bot, for example,
and even as a CSM.
And that's like four big rolesin your business that are either
costing you a ton of time or youa ton of money to staff.
And now I want to talk about howto use AI in your gym's
marketing and brand and culture.
(18:44):
So in the first part of thispodcast, I talked about how to
use AI bots for your operationsand even for some of your
coaching.
But the top of the businesspyramid is built on attention
and storytelling and humanconnection.
Great marketing and brandstorytelling take time, and
that's time that a lot of gymowners don't have.
I mean, I've been telling gymowners to publish more content
(19:06):
since 2011, at least.
And it's still the mostchallenging part of what we
recommend gym owners do.
So now it's an interesting timebecause content is still really
powerful to your prospectiveaudience and to your clients,
but AI is making that reallyeasy and fast to produce content
for the first time.
We're at this kind of nexuswhere you can create content in
(19:29):
seconds and that content isstill going to be really
effective for getting andkeeping clients.
So here's how AI can help youbuild and promote your gym
better and faster and with moreconsistency across all four
marketing funnels.
So the first funnel is socialmedia and GLM, Gym Lead Machine,
uses AI to plan, generate, andoptimize your social posts,
(19:49):
automatically repurposingcontent into multiple four to
keep your feed consistent andstrategic.
Another tool is CapCut.
It's AI automatically captionsformats and cuts your videos for
reels and TikToks, making iteasy to create high quality
video content in minutes.
A little word of warning here.
Some platforms and theirpromoters overemphasize using AI
(20:11):
to create content.
AI is not perfect.
You still have to look at thepictures and edit the text.
I'm sure you've seen a Facebookpost from somebody that's like
all in on AI and it's gotspelling errors or the picture
is off, it doesn't make sense,you immediately lose trust, not
just for the AI, but for thatperson too.
Remember, like your brand isyour reputation.
(20:33):
And if you don't spell check, ifyou don't check what you're
putting out in the world, yourreputation could grow or it
could suffer.
I just want you to remember thata bad piece of content can hurt
you as much as 50 good pieces ofcontent will help you.
So images and texts that areautomatically AI generated will
open you up to criticism onlineand sometimes laughter.
(20:53):
The second funnel is the contentfunnel.
And so a great tool here isWhisperFlow.
Now, John Goodman was talkingabout this at the Two Brain
Summit.
What it does is it collects andedits client video stories via
mobile prompts, which makes itreally, really easy to showcase
transformations and testimonialswithout scheduling interviews.
(21:14):
So let's say that you're waitingin line outside or you're
outside the coffee shop or theice cream stand and you see a
client walk by and you pick itup and you just tell that client
story.
WhisperFlow will turn that intoa blog post for you that's
really, really easy to justpost, okay?
You can also use ChatGPT's 4.0mode to create consistent
(21:34):
messaging, value-based scripts,and brand storytelling prompts
to reinforce what makes your gymunique.
So what I like to do sometimesin my gym is just have the GPT
interview me.
Hey, when did you first meetthis client?
What brought them into the gym?
What's their favorite thingabout the gym?
What's your best story aboutthis client?
And it turns that into a blogpost for me.
It just feels really, reallyeasy.
(21:55):
Another one is a referralfunnel.
So the third marketing funnelthat we teach is the referral
funnel.
Most gym owners are way toopassive about referrals, but you
can use a tool like Bonjoro tosend personalized video requests
for referrals.
And then the AI recommendstalking points and automatically
reminds clients at the bestmoment that they should refer
somebody, like after they've hita PR or a milestone.
(22:17):
You can also just use ChatGPTfor this and build automated
thank you notes, referralrequests, and follow-up messages
that sound personal but nottemplated or salesy, and then
plug those into your clientjourney to automatically send
with tools like GLM.
I mean, let's face it.
I've been asking people forreferrals for a long time.
I feel great about it because Iknow that I'm saving their
(22:38):
spouse's life, their friend'slife, their coworker's life.
But I know a lot of new gymowners feel awkward about asking
for referrals.
And so it's easier just torecord a video once, put it in a
GLM workflow, and let itautomatically send to every
client after 90 days, somethinglike that.
It's very simple.
You don't have to do it everytime.
Just get it out of your hands,but make sure it gets done.
(23:00):
And this is a great example ofsystemizing, optimizing, and
then automating.
So the fourth funnel you want tobuild is a paid ads funnel.
Now, you want to use Meta's toolto do this, basically, because
it's It generates highconverting ad images and copy
based on your target audience,which is great if you're running
meta or you're running Googleads and it's built in, right?
(23:22):
So their meta is built in AIdynamically tests and optimizes
ad performance for you.
This used to be like learningchemistry.
It was complicated.
You really had to focus on it.
A lot of gyms hated it.
They would learn to do itthrough two brain and then they
would choose to hire an agencyfrom a place of knowledge,
right?
Like the wrong thing to do hereis say, I hate ads, but I think
(23:43):
I need them.
I'm going to hire an agency torun them for me.
The agency's incentive is tospend your entire budget.
You need to learn how to dothis, and then you can hand it
off for much, much less withmuch, much greater results.
And so that's what we do in TwoBrain.
But Meta has an AI learningsystem now, which takes a lot of
the pain out.
So if you used to run ads, ifyou've been running ads, but you
(24:04):
hate it, really talk to atwo-brain marketing mentor about
how to use AI on the Metaplatform, by the way, to
optimize for you so that you'renot constantly tracking and
setting up spreadsheets andoptimizing and tweaking and
guessing.
It takes the guesswork out ofit.
So you provide the assets likethe pictures and the text, which
by the way, two-brain gives youin the two-brain toolkit.
(24:26):
And then Meta does the heavylifting across the audiences and
placements.
So while the same picture mightnot work for my gym and your
gym, I'm going to give you a lotof different pictures and let
Meta do the testing, decidewhich one works best, and then
just start running ads on that.
And the fifth thing here, youknow, there's really only four
funnels that you need in yourgym, but the safety net, right?
(24:46):
The catch-all is SEO and search.
And I think this is a reallyimportant point to make.
SEO is going away, or at leastit's changed so much that it
will need a new name soon.
More and people are lettingChatGPT or Gemini do their
searching for them.
They're not even going on Googleanymore.
ChatGPT now handles over abillion searches every week.
(25:09):
So it's not just saying like,here's how to do this.
What it's doing is actuallysearching the internet, finding
the answer, and then presentingit back to the user.
Now, even five years ago, Googlewas moving away from having
clickable links on google.com tojust putting the best answer
right on the homepage.
And now the process is justspeeding up tenfold with Gemini
(25:30):
and other AI agents, right?
The information age is kind ofover and the augmentation age is
here.
You know, the Wall StreetJournal just had a great article
last week about Google searchesdemise.
Google is kind of panickingbecause it's realized like
search is over and within a yearor two, SEO will almost be
irrelevant because the audienceis no longer a person typing in
(25:52):
a search query, but a bot that'sactually doing the searching and
presenting the answer instead ofa link to an article that
contains the answer.
So, you know, what does thismean?
Well, it means that thecompanies themselves...
are pivoting.
And it means it's a massiveopportunity for you.
Imagine that Google search hadjust launched today, knowing
(26:13):
what you do now, you would havea massive advantage, right?
You would know, okay, here's howI get everybody in my town to my
site because they're usingGoogle search.
And I know exactly what keywordsto use.
I know to publish some contentand that's going to like make
Google point to me every singletime.
If you ranked number one inGoogle for the next three years,
what kind of advantage wouldthat give you?
(26:35):
Well, this is your opportunityto do the same thing with bots.
It's not quite the same asstarting over because Gemini and
the other chatbots still searchthe internet for information,
but you can still gain a massiveadvantage if you act right now.
Here's how to do it.
First, publish a lot of qualitycontent.
Forget the SEO rank math andjust tell the answer.
(26:56):
Here's how to lose weight.
Second, look for your brand onReddit and make sure that you
respond to posts.
Do the same on Google MyBusiness.
If you have bad reviews or goodGood reviews anywhere, start
responding to all of thembecause that's what the bots are
looking for.
I don't know why they prioritizeReddit.
I can't imagine like a moredeceptive, negative place to
(27:18):
find answers, but they do.
And the key is that if you getcriticism or if you get praise
on Reddit or on Facebook reviewsor Google reviews, you need to
respond anyway so that the botcan decipher what's the truth
and what's not.
Next, you want to make sure thatyour website has a lot of
stories and how to exercisevideos on it.
The most important visitors inthe future will be bots, not
(27:41):
humans.
The humans will find theiranswers through the bots.
So the bots will be coming toyour website looking for the
information.
If they don't find it in a halfa second, they're gone.
They're going to go looksomewhere else and report that
back to the user.
So make sure that you've got...
you know, good content fast, andalso make sure that your site
loads fast because bots aregoing to grab the first info
(28:02):
they can get.
Instead of waiting for your siteto load, they're going to move
on to the next.
So the battle for the fastest AIis already getting crazy, which
is why companies like Nvidiahave skyrocketing stock prices,
but that's another post.
Like this pursuit of speed inbot search is what has made
Nvidia the world's first$4trillion company, right?
(28:25):
That's critical to understand.
Next, forget the personal brandstuff.
Nobody's out there searching forinformation about you.
Should I look at Chris Cooper asa fitness coach?
No.
Which gym in my town is the bestfor me?
That's what they're looking.
Build your business brand.
It's time to go hard on yourbusiness brand and put your own
personal brand stuff on the backburner for now.
(28:48):
If you do nothing else for therest of 2025 and just focus on
publishing content to build yourbusiness brand, you will be six
months ahead of Look, it's notjust search.
80% of consumers now resolve 40%of their online searches without
clicking any links.
This has a name.
It's called zero-click search.
(29:09):
That means they're usinggenerative AI for shopping
recommendations.
OpenAI is about to add a Buy Nowbutton that links to a
merchant's website, which willlet people shop through ChatGPT.
That seems like a pretty obviousadvantage for the merchant
that's linked by the bot.
Maybe that should be you, right?
Traffic and ranking and averageposition and click-through
(29:32):
rates, none of these metricseven make sense to chase going
forward.
Okay.
So that's marketing, but I wantto talk quickly about building
culture and community andidentity because AI can't lead
people, but it can give you backthe hours that you need to lead
people better.
So for example, you can automateyour admin so that you can host
(29:52):
a monthly seminar at your gymfor prospects and clients and
their families and friends.
It can schedule your media postsso that you can show up and
interview your clients more orcoach more.
You can use AI to take theresults from your goal reviews.
You got a little bot sittingthere with you while you're
doing a goal review, and it canturn those into podium posts.
It can also change yourprogramming to reflect what the
(30:14):
majority of your gym actuallyneeds.
My final thought here is youdon't need to fear AI.
You need to use it to buy backyour time so that you can lead
like only a gym owner can.
So start with the lowest valuerepetitive roles.
While AI can't clean your toiletyet, it can perform tasks that
are just as important, but mightfeel gross to you, right?
(30:35):
Only you can define what a lowvalue role means.
And while I place a low priorityon billing and a high priority
on blogging, you might do theopposite and that's okay.
The goal here is to use AI tobuy back your time for the
things that you're best at andlove most.
I'm Chris Cooper.
This is Run a Profitable Gym.
And this discussion is ongoing.
It happens every single day inour free group,
(30:57):
GymOwnersUnited.com.
You can join that group, youknow, as long as your intentions
are pure.
I'm just kidding.
As long as you're not a jerk,you're welcome in that group and
you can discuss, you can askquestions, you can answer other
people's questions, and we cantalk about AI.
I will say that that group isnot run by bots.
And so if you ask for somethingin that group and I respond,
(31:17):
you're talking to a human andnot a robot.
So keep that in mind when we'rechatting through Facebook
Messenger, please.
Thank you for your service.
A bot can replace a lot ofbusiness tasks, but it can never
replace you.
The information age is over.
The augmentation age is upon us.
Use bots to help make you abetter leader, gym owner, and
(31:40):
fitness coach.
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